


Are You Two Seeing Each Other?

by queercapwriting (queergirlwriting)



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/F, can't think of any other tags for now but, gayyyyy, my bbies
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-29
Updated: 2019-04-29
Packaged: 2019-09-29 20:31:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 13,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17210426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queergirlwriting/pseuds/queercapwriting
Summary: The adventures of Thirteen and Yaz figuring out whether they are, in fact, seeing each other.**spoiler: they are.





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> post 11x04. enough said.

“You alright, Doc?” Graham asked gently when they were all safely back on the TARDIS. 

He always asked, once they were back on the TARDIS.

He had the feeling that the Doctor was never alright, not really; but asking was all he knew how to do.

“Top of the line,” the Doctor responded, an almost undetectable tremor in her voice.

Ryan heard it, though. Of course he did.

“It wasn’t your fault, Doctor. Them killing the mother spider like that. You did everything you could.”

“There’s always more I could do, Ryan,” she said, soft and unaccusing. Well, unaccusing to anyone but herself. 

“But!” She clapped her hands, and Yasmin almost jumped from her quiet corner of the console room. “The TARDIS has been humming away, working on that video game room you two were gossiping about. I think she’s nearly done! Go on, go find it! And don’t you two fall into the swimming pool again, it’s clearly labeled.”

Ryan and Graham cast a last, worried look at the Doctor, then back at Yaz, before thanking her and scampering off on another one of their explorations.

The Doctor smiled faintly as she watched them go, before turning her attention to yet another something on the console controls that needed tinkering.

“You’re quiet, Yasmin Khan,” she mused after a long moment, her eyes fixed on her work, but her voice rich with invitation.

“Sorry,” Yaz shook her head and stretched her legs, walking over to the Doctor’s station slowly. 

“Never apologize for silence. Silence is good. Well, the quiet bit, not the cult that tried to take over humanity bit.”

Yaz blinked but let it go. It made her smile, all the things in the Doctor’s head that only made sense with elaborate explanations, and even then, only just.

It made her knees a little weak, too, if truth be told.

“It’s just…” She sighed, unsure how to phrase it; if she would sound like she was accusing the Doctor of something, which was the absolute last thing she wanted to do. “If we hadn’t gone back to mine for tea, on a whim, really, then none of this would’ve happened. Well, I mean, it would have done, wouldn’t it, because the spiders were still living and growing and no one would have been able to step in and…”

The Doctor stopped her tinkering but still let herself lean down on the console as she looked up at Yaz, quiet and waiting and radiating attention.

It was intense, being this powerful being’s sole focus of attention.

It was intoxicating.

Yaz gulped and carried on. “I guess I’m just… that must happen a lot then. The coincidences of the universe, where something seemingly so benign is really not at all, and threatens the whole world, or worlds, or whatever. And it just… it makes me wonder, you know?”

“How many lives we don’t save because we didn’t happen by for tea at the right place at the right time,” the Doctor finishes gently, and Yaz nods apologetically.

The Doctor sighs and straightens up, looking Yaz up and down almost unconsciously. 

“I know. I think about it all the time, too. I do. I guess I just have to trust the TARDIS to take us where she knows we need to be, and distress calls take care of the rest of it. I’ll never reconcile with not being able to be everywhere at once, you know? But for what we have, I guess it’s not bad, is it? To do what we can, when we can?”

“It’s beautiful,” Yaz whispered, realizing too late that her eyes drifted down to the Doctor’s lips as she said it.

She cleared her throat. “So. My mum thinks we’re seeing each other.”

The Doctor guffawed. “No, no, we cleared that right up, didn’t we? I said I didn’t think so, and you said we’re friends, and that was that?”

She didn’t realize she ended her sentence with a question until after she did, and immediately, her stomach squirmed.

Yaz shrugged long and somewhat dramatic, thoughts of her mother bringing out a bit of the petulance she normally controlled well. 

“Not for her, apparently. She pulled me aside and said something about ‘who doesn’t know whether they’re seeing someone, what kinds of things are we two getting up to that make those boundaries unclear?’” Yaz forced a chuckle. “Bizarre, right?”

The Doctor blinked. “Is it? I mean, do you want it to be? Bizarre?”

“I – “

“Because it’s not unheard of. As many years in this universe as I’ve been around, and I… well, I’ve danced, certainly. I just don’t usually – it’s too heavy, you know what I mean, Yasmin Khan? Humans, you get old so quickly and the kind of life I lead isn’t the kind of life that – “

“It’s wonderful.”

“It’s full of death.”

“It’s full of hope.”

A long, long pause. 

“For the record, I don’t usually love it when my mother’s right,” Yaz took a full step back, needing to breathe and knowing that the Doctor needed to, as well. “But I wouldn’t be averse. To seeing each other. And don’t you dare say we’re looking at each other right now, Doctor, because you know that’s not what I mean.”

Her laughter – both of their laughter – was genuine this time, and the Doctor marveled at how this new human girl could tell exactly when the tension needed to be let out of the room, when the Doctor was about to tip the scales of nervous and socially awkward and needed to retreat, retreat, retreat.

For now.

She laughed, grateful and self-deprecating, and maybe, with a little bit of hope.

“Dually noted, Yasmin Khan,” she made a sweeping, bowing gesture as Yas skipped toward the path Ryan and Graham had taken earlier.

“I’m going to kick the boys’ bums at Mario Kart. If you want to join us, Doctor, we’d all love it. In your time.”

Yaz smiled, patted the doorway once, and left the console room.

“In my time,” the Doctor whispered to herself, to the TARDIS, who hummed with knowing approval and patient anticipation.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I see @chaos-otter’s prompt of “going ice skating or making a blanket fort” and raise it to going ice skating *and* making a blanket fort.

“Hey Doctor,” Ryan asks, Graham behind him, urging him on. “How’s about today, we get up to something… regular?”

Yaz cocks an amused eyebrow, but the Doctor just scrunches her nose in confusion. “You mean like something that happens regularly? Ooh, a supernova, those are always nice! Well, as long as you’re outside the blast radius, which, let’s be honest, isn’t always – “

“Well, you see, Doc, that sounds lovely, and I’d love to see a supernova, I really would. But I think what Ryan meant was… normal. Can we get up to something standard human earth normal?”

Ryan and Yaz groan slightly, because sure, that’s what Ryan was asking for, but more like a relaxing day out rather than a ‘screw your chaotic life even though we all said we were sure about it’ kind of thing. 

“What? I just mean something where I don’t have to carry my own sandwiches because there’ll be proper food places about.”

The Doctor opened her mouth, and Graham held up his finger playfully. “And don’t you tell me about that kabob stand on that last planet we were on, that wasn’t proper – “

“I think what Graham means,” Yaz rescues him, tossing her arms around the boys’ shoulders, “is that we’d love for you to come do some things we’d do back home. Like… ooh, we could go ice skating! Would you want to go ice skating?”

“Yasmin Khan, I thought you’d never ask,” the Doctor beams, and Yaz flushes. 

“To go ice skating?”

“Exactly. I know just the place!”

“It’s going to be alien ice skating, isn’t it?” Graham asks with grimace that was somewhere between exasperated and excited.

“You know it,” Ryan agrees with a grin.

“I’ll go make a sandwich,” Graham murmurs good naturedly, and the Doctor bounces on the balls of her feet with excitement.

“Make sure to come back with warm clothes, too! For all of you! Oh, this is going to be the best!”

And it is. 

Because she takes them to an entire ice planet. Not to Woman Wept – it would be just plain disrespectful to go ice skating there – but to one whose inhabitants welcome visitors and ice enthusiasts of all kinds.

There’s even a stand selling something that tastes vaguely like hot chocolate.

While Ryan and Graham wait eagerly in line – this time they’re the ones bouncing on the balls of their feet with excitement – the Doctor grabs Yaz’s hand.

Yaz gulps and wishes she weren’t wearing gloves to protect herself from the cold.

She wonders why she wished that.

She tells her own brain to shut up, already.

“Come on, Yaz! Ice skating with Yasmin Khan. Never gone ice skating with Yasmin Khan! Do you go a lot, back home?”

The Doctor keeps hold of Yaz’s hand, her body steadying her even though, verbally, she isn’t acknowledging what Yaz is staring at; horizon-to-horizon full of open ice, maintained for creatures of all shapes and sizes to skate, slide, and glide on, sometimes dipping into slopes and sometimes climbing up steep, impossible-looking inclines.

“I do, but it’s nothing on this,” Yaz whispers, so low she’s afraid the Doctor won’t hear her.

But, of course, she does.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” the Doctor asks, her eyes not quite on the scenery.

“Yeah,” Yaz agrees breathlessly, before the Doctor tugs on her hand – still held firmly in hers – and swings her forward with a laugh.

Yaz yelps in joyful surprise, and it’s the happiest sound she can remember making since she was doing her A levels. 

“Ryan! Graham! Get out here!” she yelps as she and the Doctor slip into a stride with each other.

Ryan falls, and falls, and falls again, but his smile is broad as Graham takes photos of Yaz and the Doctor skating up to him, scooping him up and gesturing wildly at the beauty of the vast ocean of ice meeting the sky behind them, creatures sliding on their stomachs and creatures effortlessly gliding on their bare feet rather than skates weaving all around them.

“Get in too, old man!” he calls, and the Doctor laughs as they all debate about who has the longest arms for the universe’s greatest selfie.

Yaz leans into the Doctor, and the Doctor leans into Yaz.

Yaz tells herself it’s because the Doctor isn’t wearing anything more than her usual coat and short pants, and the Doctor tells herself it’s because she doesn’t get cold, but humans sure do.

Ryan skates hand in hand with Yaz while Graham and the Doctor take in the view; Graham and Yaz do a little ice dance together while Ryan peppers the Doctor with questions about everything and everyone they’re seeing; Yaz and the Doctor scream with laughter as they plummet down a steep slope together, more skiing than skating, hand in hand and heartbeat in heartbeats.

They’re all – even the Doctor – nearly frozen solid when they trek back into the TARDIS, and none of them can remember the last time they laughed like that.

“Only one thing to do after a snow type session like that, you know,” Ryan glances at Graham, because it was a Grace thing, so Graham knows.

“Cocoa and blanket forts,” he supplies almost solemnly, and Ryan nods once, deeply.

The Doctor and Yaz exchange a look, giving the two their mourning privacy.

Both almost reach for the other’s hand.

“In the library? The one with the massive fire place? Doctor, is that alright?”

“Absolutely,” she agrees readily, generously. Lovingly.

“And you’re coming, too, Doc,” Graham says. “None of that jabber about needing to fiddle with the TARDIS. You’ll have some proper fun and warmth with us, alright?”

Her eyes flit to Yaz, and she swallows hard.

“Alright,” she nods, and this time, Yaz takes her hand as they all scamper to the library, the one with the massive fire place.

They make a pit stop in the seemingly endless room of linens and blankets and squishy things of all kinds. 

Yaz and Ryan get into the pillow fight to end all pillow fights, and eventually they all choose the best pieces for blanket forting. 

The Doctor’s sonic comes in handy, as does Graham’s camping experience and Ryan’s building-blanket-forts-with-Grace experiences. Yaz is the one who makes sure they don’t collapse their newly forming structure with their zealous enthusiasm.

Of course she is.

“It’s wonderful,” Ryan sighs as he finally collapses into the abundance of fluff that lines the floor of their massive fort.

“It really is,” Graham settles in next to him, unwrapping a sandwich from the depths of his pockets.

“Yeah,” Yaz agrees, hesitating before settling next to Ryan and patting the cushions right next to her skin. “Doctor? You’re gonna lay with us, aren’t you?”

“I thought I’d get the cocoa,” the Doctor murmurs, suddenly either nervous or socially awkward.

That usually only happens in public, Yaz registers dimly. She dares to hope that it has something to do with the fact that she’s inviting the Doctor to lay down next to her. Close, next to her.

She gulps.

“We can get the cocoa later, Doc. Come enjoy,” Graham invites, and Yaz wonders if he’s thinking what she’s thinking, making a mental note to thank him later.

“Yeah, Doctor, there’s plenty of room next to Yaz.”

Well. Ryan will get a thank you later, too.

“Yes. Of course. Alright. Laying next to Yasmin Khan. Amazing.”

Ryan nudges Yaz happily in the ribs, and yeah, he definitely ships it.

The knowledge makes Yaz almost dizzy with giddiness.

The Doctor’s body heat settles down next to Yaz, and she swears she can hear both of the other woman’s hearts pounding.

Or maybe that’s just the intensity of her own.

The Doctor seems unsure of what to do with her hands, and, if she’s being honest, Yaz is, too. 

Their pinkies wind up brushing next to each other, then skittering away, then brushing each other again. Then, staying. Linking. 

Neither of them acknowledge it, as they breathe in and out, alternately enjoying the silence and laughing softly with the boys about who knows what.

Neither of them acknowledge it, but when Yaz drifts off to sleep, the Doctor’s pinkie is still wrapped around hers.

The Doctor doesn’t move it away.

When Graham gets up quietly to make cocoa as promised, he notices.

He smiles, but says nothing.

The Doctor smiles back at him, but says nothing.

Nothing needs to be said.

Not yet.

Not yet.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yaz Works Out and The Doctor is a Gay Mess (Thasmin)

She discovered the room when she was looking for the swimming pool that Ryan and Graham apparently kept falling into.

It was in disuse, an ancient looking stationary bicycle in the corner actively accumulating dust. Yaz had never seen dust anywhere else in the TARDIS, and when the thought crossed her mind, the TARDIS seemed to hum with laughter.

She would have hesitated about using the room – which, aside from the bike in the corner, with the echoes of someone called Mel hovering around it, was in pristine condition – except that the Doctor had said that anything the TARDIS saw fit to show her was hers to explore, to use.

So far, she’d discovered wardrobes that made department stores cower in comparison, a library that made Belle’s in Beauty and the Beast look like a mere bookshelf, and a choice of bedrooms ranging from eighteenth century canopy beds to a stainless steel looking parody of Earth industrial aesthetic.

Now, discovering a fitness center near the heart of the TARDIS – just when she’d been thinking that she’d like nothing more than to work off some stress (hence searching for the pool Ryan and Graham kept running into) – felt like an open invitation from the TARDIS.

She opened one of the storage closets to find, to her relief, leggings, trainers, and a tank that fit her perfectly – like the TARDIS knew that if she left the room to find the wardrobe or her bedroom for clothes, she would never find this place again.

An hour later, she was covered in a thin sheen of sweat, her hands wrapped and expertly pounding away at the heavy bag.

The TARDIS chimed off three minute rounds with thirty second rests, and Yaz revelled in the exhaustion.

She didn’t notice that anyone was standing in the doorway, slack-jawed, until she finished a round with an spinning hook kick that sent her into something like a superhero landing.

“Yasmin Khan,” was the only thing the Doctor managed to eek out, and Yaz trembled even as she grabbed at her knees and panted.

The Doctor, who abhorred violence (except when it’s on her terms), who flinched whenever she seemed to remember that Yaz’s job involved carrying a taser, who made the more-than-occasional – and, according to Yaz, completely accurate (which is exactly why she joined the force to begin with, to change things) – side comment about the whole policing institution of Earth being unevolved… watching her punch and kick with ruthless efficiency, her training combined with the years of mixed martial arts after growing up getting beaten up for her name, her skin tone, her everything.

The Doctor, standing in the doorway, watching the way Yaz copes – the coping mechanism she keeps quiet, underneath her kindness to children and sharp wit and even sharper empathy with her friends…

Surely, the Doctor couldn’t possibly like what she saw.

Surely, the Doctor couldn’t respect her anymore, like her anymore, have… whatever feelings Yaz thought she might have, sometimes, when she thought Yaz wasn’t watching the trajectory of her eyes to Yaz’s lips…

Surely, the Doctor would hate recognizing a version of her own demons in the soul of one of her companions, her fam, who were supposed to keep her in check, keep her light, keep her from committing genocide in the name of peace.

Her sweat had been making her warm just moments before, but under the Doctor’s gaze, she shivered.

“Doctor,” she panted, tentatively, nervously. Hoping that her voice didn’t sound different, when she was fresh off of tearing into a heavy bag like it was that white guy who’d threatened her sister last year, like it was her superior officers who kept her on traffic patrol because they didn’t think she deserved or was capable of more, like it was the resigned disappointment in her mother’s voice when she’d told her she was bi all those years ago.

“You found the rec center,” the Doctor said, still standing in the doorway like she was unsure if she was welcome to come in.

Like a puppy hoping to be invited, but prepared to be rejected.

Yaz’s heart shuddered.

“I was looking for that pool Ryan and Graham keep running into.”

“Literally.”

They shared a chuckle that ended with the Doctor’s eyes sweeping up and down Yaz’s body, subtle, quick.

Yaz was suddenly very aware of the way she’d sweated through her tank top, the way the definition in her arms popped; the curves made clear by the fit of these leggings.

“You know,” the Doctor ventured, seemingly emboldened by their shared laughter, “that bike’s mine. Well, used to be. I was a bit of an older man, once – well, a lot of times, really – and one of my friends, Mel, her name was, she would give me this disgusting juice to drink, make me ride that bike. Was very into her juices and bike rides, Mel was.”

A familiar look of nostalgia crossed the Doctor’s face as she meandered over toward the old bike in the corner, and Yaz watched her lazily as she caught her breath, her heart starting to calm in more than one way.

Maybe the Doctor didn’t hate her for the barely controlled rage she’d seen. Maybe she wouldn’t be disgusted by the expert way she’d learned to channel that rage into the potential for easy violence.

“Is it alright? That I’m using this room? I don’t want to intrude on old memories or – “

“No, no, I’m glad it’s being put to good use. Running, that’s what this fam is always doing. Love the running. Or, the kickboxing, maybe.”

Another subtle eye sweep.

Yaz’s knees weakened, and it had nothing to do with her workout.

“I thought you might not approve,” she ventured, her voice soft and scared.

The Doctor cocked her head and scrunched up her nose, suddenly laser-focusing her attention on Yaz, and only Yaz.

A lesser woman would have cowered.

Yaz just gulped and fought to keep the Doctor’s gaze.

“You don’t need my approval for anything, Yasmin Khan. Except perhaps the food on alien planets, because you really never know with some of those smoothies. Not the kinds of smoothies you’d expect on Earth, let me tell you.”

“Doctor, you’re drifting.”

They both smiled.

“Point is, you don’t need my approval. Not for this, not for anything. But even if you did… you have it. Just because I don’t keep fit doesn’t mean you can’t.”

“Oh, you keep fit enough,” Yaz said before she had the chance to think about it.

The Doctor gulped, this time. Not quite as hard as she did when Yaz told her she wasn’t going to leave her side, but hard enough.

“Do I? You think so?” The Doctor flared out her arms, her coat flapping slightly like a cape, and Yaz couldn’t help but laugh.

“Definitely, Doctor. But really, though. It’s not… I’m not… it’s violent, really, isn’t it? Rule one is no weapons, but here you are, saying it’s okay that my body’s crafted like a weapon itself – “

“All our bodies are weapons, Yaz. Our minds, our thoughts. All of it can be weaponized. But you… you use it to save the world, Yasmin Khan. On and off the TARDIS.”

“Yeah?”

A beat of silence and eye contact and weak knees from both women.

“Yes.”

Yaz smiled, suddenly, and grabbed at a towel the TARDIS had stashed for her.

“Come on, then,” she wiped her face then tossed it over her shoulders. She thought she saw the Doctor gulp again, but it might just be her ego.

It was probably definitely her ego.

Right?

“Let’s go find the boys and see if we can weaponize our minds to destroy them at Clue.”

“The professor in the library with the wrench!” The Doctor proclaimed quite seriously. “It’s happened to me before.”

Yaz laughed and tossed a casual arm over the Doctor’s shoulders.

“Tell me the story?” she asked as they set off through the TARDIS together, the old girl humming in excited approval.

“Well. I’ve told you about Donna. My friend, Donna Noble. But I haven’t told you about Agatha Christie yet, have I?”

“Seriously?”

“And a giant wasp.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“Tell me everything.”

“Always.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thasmin: Yaz gets Injured, the Doctor Carries Her (of course she does)  
> @syllabicacronyms prompted: ‘Yaz gets hurt and the Doctor takes care of her’

It should have been a routine day.

It always should have been a routine day.

But who does she think she’s kidding?

She’s punched through sheer diamond for billions of years, and she still gets surprised by days that are supposed to be routine, but are the furthest from.

Because that’s her routine, if she’s honest: destruction and death.

Sure, she tries to help. She tries to hope. She succeeds, sometimes; when her fam is around, her human friends whose eyes are so young, which she finds alternately terrifying and refreshing.

Today, it’s just terrifying.

Because Yaz had sprinted to help that child – of course she had – before any of them, even the Doctor, could have realized that the child was a grown Zygon, luring and preparing to attack.

The Doctor should have realized.

If she had, Yaz’s blood wouldn’t be on the Doctor’s hands, and Ryan wouldn’t be looking down at his friend like he’d seen a ghost, but the ghost was her.

It had been a simple matter to use her sonic to teleport the Zygon to a secure location – a problem to solve later – but she should have done it before, because she should have realized.

She was too careless, too reckless, too distracted, too… hopeful.

“I’m fine, Doctor,” Yaz wheezed, because she must have seen something dangerous flash on the Doctor’s face. “Honestly, look. It’s only a flesh wound. It’s – “

“It’s not only anything, Yasmin Khan,” the Doctor murmured as she lifted her off the ground in arms that were stronger than anything her human family had expected, if the way Ryan and Graham ‘whoa’ed and Yaz gasped were any indication.

“Sorry, should have asked first,” the Doctor blushed, but Yaz just stammered and shook, wrapping her arms around the Doctor’s neck in a way that made both of them gulp.

“No, you’re fine, I just… I can probably walk, it doesn’t even hurt that – “

“Let the Doc care for you, Yaz,” Graham encouraged, and Ryan nodded in the background, trying to subtly take out his phone to snap a picture of the Doctor carrying Yaz bridal style to the TARDIS’s medical bay.

“Yaz, we need to not disturb the wound, as much as possible. I have no doubt that you can walk, but if jostling that leg is just asking for an infection: Zygon wounds are not pretty, but you are, so I’d rather we keep you feeling that way.”

Yaz stared. 

Graham stared.

Ryan snapped the most priceless photo ever to be snapped.

The Doctor cleared her throat and turned a shade of red that Ryan desperately hoped his phone camera was good enough to capture accurately.

“Doctor,” Yaz whispered, and none of them could tell how much of the hitch in her voice was due to the Doctor carrying her, the pain in her leg, the Doctor calling her pretty, or all of the above.

Though they all assumed it was all of the above.

“Yasmin Khan?”

“We’ve reached the med bay. You can put me down now.”

“Right. Right you are.”

“But don’t go far.”

Excitement and something that looked an awful lot like hope returned to the Doctor’s eyes with a suddenness that was a wonder to behold.

“No?”

“No. I like you close. Makes the pain less.”

“Good, then.” It was the Doctor’s voice that cracked somewhat this time.

Ryan and Graham slowly backed out of the room, Graham muttering something about sandwiches and Ryan murmuring something about Yaz being in good hands.

And truly, she was.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yaz’s Fight (Yaz is a Badass™ and the Doctor is a Disaster Gay™)
> 
> prompt from @itsadisasterthanksforinvitingme “Yaz loses her shit about something and 13 has to follow her while she solves the problem this time (and works out whatever she’s angry about). This time Yaz grabs the doctors hand and drags her along, and it’s Yaz’s plan that might fail, and Yaz’s monologue that we get to hear. All while the doctor helps and marvels at this amazing human.“

It was supposed to be a routine stop home, but they all should have known – and maybe, really, they did – that routine with the Doctor very seldom means ordinary.

Because the moment Yaz steps out into the Sheffield air, she knows something’s wrong. It’s obvious; it’s all over the brick walls the Doctor parked beside.

“Doctor, this isn’t right,” she calls back into the TARDIS, her smile fading. “No.”

She doesn’t explain and she doesn’t tell anyone to follow her.

Ryan, Graham, and the Doctor just… do.

It makes sense, in an oddly seamless kind of way.

Ryan looks around to try to make sense of what’s gotten Yaz so worked up.

Graham murmurs something about “now it’s both of them doing it.”

The Doctor licks her lips as she watches Yaz walk, as she pulls the TARDIS door shut behind her.

“What is it, Yaz?” she jogs lightly to catch up, exchanging a concerned but confident glance with Ryan.

“This isn’t right,” Yaz repeats, her fists in balls at her side.

“Okay. I can check the TARDIS specs again, but I do think we’ve got the right year – “

“That’s not what’s wrong, Doctor,” Yaz stops walking abruptly.

The Doctor barrels forward into her. They reach to steady each other, the Doctor’s hands finding Yaz’s waist and Yaz letting her arm drop back behind her to steady the Doctor around her thigh.

Ryan chortles and Graham clears his throat.

“Alright?” the Doctor checks, her eyes sweeping up and down Yaz’s body.

“Yeah,” Yaz gulps, more breathless than a short walk, even brisk, would ever make her.

“So. Yasmin Khan. Tell me what isn’t right. I mean, specifically with why you walked off, not a whole list of everything wrong in the cosmos, because frankly, that’ll get long and depressing and – “

“The school, Doctor. The school. Look.”

The Doctor looks in the direction Yaz points to, at a blank brick wall in the near distance.

“There’s no more mural,” the Doctor murmurs, and Yaz brightens slightly, almost like she’s proud. Like the roles are reversed – Yaz has the lead and the Doctor has the sharp observation skills – and she likes it, underneath her anger.

“No more mural,” she confirms, exchanging a significant glance with an open-mouthed Ryan. “Come on, then, Doctor,” Yaz squares her jaw and restarts her stride, taking the Doctor’s hand into her own and pulling her forward.

Graham nudges Ryan in the ribs, and Ryan nearly trips over himself.

Yaz doesn’t notice, and neither – staring down at their connected hands like she’s never seen quite an appendage before – does the Doctor.

“So what’s the deal with this mural, Doc – er, Yaz?”

“Ryan should remember,” Yaz answers vaguely, still walking briskly toward the school, still holding the Doctor’s hand.

“It was a message,” Ryan explains, jogging slightly to catch up to his friends. “From those of us who were born here, to those of us who weren’t. Immigrants and refugees, you know?”

“The students in the middle school got together and made their school let them do the mural. Against xenophobia and imperialism and all that.”

“And now it’s gone,” Graham turns back to look at the wall, mystified.

“And it looks like it was never there, yeah,” Yaz comes to a halt just outside the school doors.

She only lets go of the Doctor’s hand when she needs one hand to open the door and the other to reach for her badge.

She doesn’t look too happy about the loss of contact, and the Doctor looks baffled. And intrigued. And amazed.

And maybe something that Ryan might call turned on, but just maybe.

“’Scuse us, sweetie,” she drops to one knee a meter or two in front of a young boy on his way out of class and into the restroom. “My name’s Yaz, and these are my friends. Ryan, Graham, and… the Doctor. What’s yours?”

“Jeffrey,” the boy answers, gamely but shyly.

“Jeffrey. A great name. Now listen, Jeffrey, do you remember that big painting on the wall outside the school?”

The boy nods. Normally, the Doctor is all about children, when they’re around. But right now, she can’t take her eyes off of Yasmin Khan.

“That’s good. Do you know who painted over it? Or when?”

“The aliens did it,” the boy leans in to whisper. “Not the bad word for other humans, I mean. The ones with magic science who come from another planet. Most of them were nice, but a few, they – “

“Excuse me,” heels click down the hall, and Yaz rises off of her knee.

“Jeffrey, go finish your business and then get back to your class.”

The boy nods obediently, but not before giving Yaz a long, significant look, and jerking his head over his shoulder toward the new, authoritative voice.

“That’s no way to talk to a child, with that tone,” the Doctor speaks for the first time, like instinct, but with a backward glance from Yaz, she smiles and quiets down, happy to defer to her… friend? More?

Fam.

Fam works.

“And four adults strolling into a middle school with no – Yasmin Khan? Ryan Sinclair? Well, you two have grown.”

“And you… haven’t aged a day, Mr. Pierce,” Yaz tilts her head from one side to another. “And we were just popping in to check on our alma mater, you know – we noticed the mural outside’s been washed away. Not even painted over with something new, just… erased.”

“Times have changed, Ms. Khan. And your other friends are – “

“Graham, Ryan’s granddad, and my…”

Yaz’s stomach flips, the Doctor’s eyes go wide, Ryan holds his breath, and Graham wishes he had popcorn to watch Yaz parkour her way out of this one.

“My… the Doctor. This is the Doctor.”

“You bring your physician to visit your old school?”

“She’s not my…” Yaz takes a deep breath. “Oy, what is that smell? Are you all experimenting with a different cleaner, or what?”

“I smell nothing,” Mr. Pierce straightens his shoulders.

“No, Yaz is right, it’s like…” The Doctor smacks her lips, and Yaz doesn’t even bother trying to repress the smile that forms in her eyes. “Like marble and cedar? With a drop of…” She breathes in with exaggerated depth. “Is that lemon oil?”

“Lemon oil, definitely,” Graham helps as Ryan nods.

“And you dropped by to… smell your old school hallways?”

“No, sir, it’s as I’ve said: the mural is gone, and it seems rather sudden, and I didn’t hear about any movement from the students to replace it with anything else or – “

“As I said, Ms. Khan. Times change.”

“Yeah, and they haven’t been changing for the good, in case you haven’t noticed. They’ve been spiraling down and down, and that mural was a monument to the fact that our students are better than the world they’re growing up in. Did the students say they wanted to take it down? Because they sure fought to get it painted in the first place, barely two years ago now, so what – “

“If you’d like to learn more about our school’s policies, I suggest you set an appointment,” Mr. Pierce interrupts, his eyes distant and his voice cold. He’s staring over Yaz’s shoulder at the Doctor’s face, like Yaz hadn’t spoken at all.

“Oy, look at Yaz while she’s talking to you,” Ryan scolds, and the Doctor smirks at his defiance and beauty.

“That’s alright, Ryan,” Yaz’s tone is measured and careful, her eyes fixed on Mr. Pierce’s face. “I think Mr. Pierce just gave us everything we need.”

She doesn’t say good bye to the man, and she doesn’t say anything to her friends, but they all follow her.

She takes the Doctor’s hand again as she reverses direction and stalks back out of the school.

“So,” she says as the big double doors close behind them, but she doesn’t let go of the Doctor’s hand. “Mr. Pierce was replaced or something by one of the aliens little Jeffrey was talking about, because that man would have aged in the last decade, and because – “

“The lemon zing in the air!” the Doctor contributes triumphantly, and Yaz squeezes her hand and kisses her knuckles too quickly to realize the implications of what she’s done.

The Doctor trips over herself and Ryan would too, if Graham hadn’t caught him.

“Exactly, the lemon zing. Because I remember you saying something about the after effects of Zygon duplication, that scent, that taste… And if someone was invested in maintaining the status quo, taking down that mural, stripping the students of their ability to support each other, to see beyond borders, that… it makes sense, doesn’t it? Turning the population against itself as preparation for an invasion.”

“So what do we do?” Ryan asks, and even though Yaz stops walking and looks at the Doctor instinctively, it’s the Doctor’s turn to squeeze Yaz’s hand.

“Your turf, your rules, Yasmin Khan.” Her voice is rich and her eyes are deep with admiration.

It only takes her an hour of rifling through the TARDIS; of rambling through her own thought process out loud; of taking one of Graham’s sandwiches and eating it while poring over months’ worth of school newspaper archives with Ryan; of putting her hands on the Doctor’s hips when she needs to pass behind her to look at the result of yet another projection she’d asked the TARDIS to run; to come up with her plan.

The first thing they do is find Jeffrey again – he’s more than eager to help – and then it’s off to the races.

They find the real Mr. Pierce plugged into a life-support chamber in the school’s basement, and Yaz, this time, is the one to explain to him everything that’s going on. To explain that he’ll be alright, that she knows this is confusing, but the students are fine and he’s going to be fine, too.

It’s Yaz who gets to explain her plan to the fake Mr. Pierce, emphasizing the point about how ironic it is to stir up xenophobic fears amongst humans while trying to colonize the entire planet, bit by bit, school by school.

It’s Yaz who gets to explain that the students aren’t going to stand for it; it’s Yaz who gets to tell him to walk outside with her and see the students of his middle school out there with Ryan, Graham, and the Doctor, repainting the mural even bigger and better than it had been the first time.

Ryan and Jeffrey are helping each other mix some paint, and Graham is supervising a group of eighth graders outlining the new design on the wall.

The Doctor, though – even in her new white smock, already covered in a rainbow smear of paint – is staring right at Yaz already, wonder and awe at her companion in her eyes.

“You were amazing today, Yaz,” the Doctor tells her that night over cocoa in one of the many TARDIS kitchens.

“Like you are every day,” Yaz counters easily, softly, and both of them remember the feeling of their hands connected.

“Like _you_ are every day,” the Doctor returns, her hand hovering between reaching for Yaz’s and tucking her hair back behind her own ear.

Yaz reaches up and does it for her.

Their eyes meet and the Doctor gulps, hard.

Yaz clears her throat and tries not to glance at the Doctor’s lips.

She fails.

She panics.

“Best be making sure the boys aren’t getting themselves into trouble,” she murmurs, and the Doctor nods.

“Good night, Yasmin Khan,” the Doctor whispers, hope trembling in her voice.

“Good night, Doctor,” Yaz returns, the same hope steady in her own.

One day.

One day.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yaz is drunk and upset.

She’d thought she was cut out for more than parking disputes.

She’d _wanted_ more than parking disputes, fought to be given more.

But maybe she was wrong all along.

Because today, she walked into a room full of dead bodies, alongside the Doctor, and tonight, she was drunk as all get out on some alien liquor she’d found stashed away in one of the kitchens.

She’d thought she could handle bigger things. She’d thought traveling with the Doctor had made her stronger.

Instead, it was just showing how weak she really was.

Sure, the Doctor had been upset, too. Raging, really. She’d never heard that tone in the Doctor’s voice. Except maybe with the Dalek.

But this felt almost worse, because this time, the murderer was human.

And sure, Ryan had thrown up, and Graham had to hold himself up on the blood-spattered wall, but those two weren’t drunk in here with her.

So maybe everyone had been right about her.

Maybe she was just… destined for parking disputes.

Maybe traveling with the Doctor didn’t prove that she was… meant for something more.

Maybe it just proved that when she was surrounded by incredible and brilliant people, she looked incredible and brilliant too, be default.

Not that she actually was.

The alien liquor went down hard, and she grimaced. But she refused herself a chaser.

She’d frozen.

She’d been useless to the Doctor when she needed her most.

And here she was, drinking away her own pain, without checking on the boys.

Without checking on the Doctor.

Selfish. Weak. Stupid.

Incapable of… more.

“Yasmin Khan.”

The familiar voice at the door sounded equal parts concerned and apologetic.

It struck her as absurd, that the Doctor would feel like she had anything to apologize for.

“Doctor,” she straightened up from her slouch, trying not to slur the word. She couldn’t tell if she’d failed or not.

“That’s some strong stuff,” the Doctor commented, her voice mild.

Yaz wouldn’t – couldn’t – look up at her, but when she heard the bottle being slid off of the table, humiliation boiled in her stomach.

Of course the Doctor was cutting her off. Silly, stupid human girl.

But then she heard the cap being untwisted, and the Doctor hissing along with a big gulp.

“Doesn’t go down easy, does it?” the Doctor asked, and Yaz looked up incredulously to see the Doctor holding the large bottle of unidentifiable liquor like a bottle of beer, clearly having just downed it straight from the source.

“I didn’t know you drank,” Yaz commented blandly, unsteadily kicking out a stool next to her for the Doctor to sit on.

She hoped the Doctor would sit.

She did.

Something in Yaz’s heart felt warmer, comforted.

Like things, maybe, would be alright.

Like she wasn’t so weak, so stupid, after all.

Maybe.

“I didn’t know you did.”

“A lot you don’t know about me,” Yaz countered, fiddling with the empty tumbler in her hands.

“Oh, I bet there’s a whole universe of mysteries inside you, Yasmin Khan,” the Doctor mused, but only a trace of her usual enthusiasm eeked through. Yaz registered dimly that the light in the Doctor’s eyes was all but gone.

“Yeah, like I’m a coward who doesn’t deserve to travel with you. Can’t handle doing more than resolve parking disputes,” Yaz spluttered before the liquid courage in her veins gave out.

She held her glass toward the Doctor questioningly, and to her surprise, the Doctor poured her another shot. She held up the bottle in a melancholy toast, and drank when Yaz did.

They both flinched as it went down. The Doctor recovered first.

“You are not a coward, Yaz. Why would you even think that, why would something like that ever even cross your mind?”

“I shut down today,” Yaz was ready with an answer, with bubbling anger and humiliation and just pure, pure grief. “I shut down when you needed me, with all those dead… these weren’t bodies, you know, a few hours before we got there. They were people with lives and families and hobbies and stupid like quirks and – “

Her voice broke, and so did the hardness behind her eyes.

She didn’t know if she or the Doctor was more surprised when the Doctor’s fingertips caressed the single tear away from her cheek.

She didn’t know if she or the Doctor was more surprised when the Doctor’s fingertips lingered there.

“That doesn’t make you a coward, Yaz. It makes you powerful, and brave.”

“Yeah,” Yaz scoffed, “so powerful that I’m hiding down in the kitchens squandering away your liquor.”

The Doctor chuckled dryly. “No, let me finish. Please?”

Yaz nodded miserably, and the Doctor’s hand finally dropped.

Her whole body keened with the loss of contact.

“Those emotions, thinking all that, feeling all that. I’d be concerned if you weren’t feeling them. I wouldn’t travel with you if you didn’t feel them. I can be…”

The Doctor paused and took another swig from the bottle before pouring Yaz another. “I’ve lived a longer life than you can fathom, Yasmin Khan. And the things I’ve seen, the things I’ve done? They’ve made me… they can make me callous. Hardened. Sadistic, even, I don’t know. The point is, really, that I need to surround myself with people who are brave enough to let themselves feel that agony, that grief and terror at violence like that. I need to surround myself with people who can love as hard as you do. Otherwise, I’d be lost. Without you.”

A long silence. Yaz drank.

“Me specifically, or…?”

“Generally, sure. Ryan and Graham and… there have been…. others. But also, you, specifically. Definitely you specifically, Yasmin Khan.”

“We didn’t save them.”

“I didn’t save them,” the Doctor countered, darkness suddenly swirling in her eyes.

“No. No, don’t put that on yourself, Doctor. We’re a team. A fam. We take responsibility together.”

The Doctor was silent for a long, long moment. Long enough to make Yaz concerned, to reach out her hand to touch the Doctor’s.

The Doctor startled at the contact, but kept it, staring at their hands like she’d never quite seen something so shocking, so miraculous, so gentle. So life saving.

A hand to hold.

“We’ll save more. In their honor. We won’t give up hope. In their remembrance. Deal?”

“Always.”

The Doctor gulped, hard, and Yaz had to admit that she loved when she made her do that.

“You’re beautiful,” she spluttered before she could stop herself, and the Doctor’s eyes went wide.

“I think that’s enough liquor for you, Yaz,” she gulped again, but Yaz kept her hand on the Doctor’s.

“No, it’s not the alcohol talking. I mean, it could be, you know, loosening my tongue a bit. But it’s not… you’re beautiful, Doctor. The way you… the way you are. The way you move in the universe. It’s beautiful. You’re beautiful.”

It was like once she said it, she couldn’t bear to stop.

Once she said it, it was the poem keeping her alive.

The Doctor wouldn’t stop gulping, and Yaz, even in her heavy state of emotions, relished her ability to do that to the woman.

“You’re not going to say nothing?” Yaz asked, taking her hand away from the Doctor’s in case this was horribly wrong, a horrible misinterpretation, another humiliating –

“Oh, Yasmin Khan, I have plenty I want to say. But none of it while you’ve got this much drink in you. Or me, for that matter. Speaking of which: you’re going to need to vomit soon. That much? Definitely impressive, and definitely sick-making. I can hold your hair back, if you like. I’d like that. I mean, not for you to vomit, I don’t want you to have to go through that. I mean, to… you hair… to help you.”

“Doctor, are you drunk, too?”

The Doctor scrunched up her nose, like she was calculating something. And hell, she probably was.

“A little tipsy, I think.”

Yaz smiled for the first time in hours, but it felt like the first time in years.

“We won’t stop trying, will we?” she asked, and the Doctor took her hand.

“Never, Yasmin Khan.”

“Doctor?”

“Yaz?”

“I think I do have to vomit now.”

“I’ve got you, Yaz.”

“You don’t have to.”

“Oh, but I do. Always.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thasmin's First Cheek Kiss

They don’t realize it, at first.

The ways they’ve been touching each other, more, simple, subtle, since Najia asked if they were seeing each other.

Their legs brush when they’re crammed into booths at intergalactic diners when Graham insists on stopping to eat.

Their pinkies touch when the Doctor is navigating the TARDIS and Yaz is leaning on the console, watching, chatting, watching some more.

They start hugging, too. Eventually.

It seems like Doctor would be a big hugger, if you don’t really stop to think about her fire too much. If you don’t think about her smiling sadism and how cold her eyes get when she taunts her enemies with a grin that’s almost a snarl.

But she’s not. Not really.

So Yaz is surprised the first time the Doctor wraps her into her arms, full-body contact, her arms exactly as strong as Yaz imagined them – not that she’d imagined them, of course, not at all – after they survive yet another dimension-hopping demon-type.

“You’re alright,” the Doctor whispers, and all the imagining in the world couldn’t have prepared Yaz for the way the Doctor’s breath feels against her ear.

“So are you,” she whispers back, wondering if the shiver that runs through the Doctor’s body means that she’s cold or that she’s got leftover adrenaline or… something else. 

After that, it’s like a small flood gate.

They hold hands when they’re not running for their lives, sometimes. Like when they’re strolling through an alien marketplace or Precambrian Earth islands or the 2098 Olympics.

Yaz knows Ryan notices, and they all know Graham notices – he chokes on his sandwich that first time – but, thankfully, neither of them say anything.

Ryan just squeezes Yaz’s shoulder and gives her a solemn nod, like he knows how complicated it must be to be falling for an alien of immense age and power and mystery.

But, even though their eyes find each other’s lips on more occasions than either would be willing to admit, they’ve kept their mouths to themselves.

Until the Doctor nearly falls into a crack in time, and only Yaz’s hand pulls her back.

They hug, and the Doctor trembles – that’s new, because trembling is not usually something the Doctor does – and Yaz does the only thing that makes sense, short of pressing her mouth to the Doctor’s lips.

She kisses her cheek.

She pulls back from their hug just enough, and she lets her lips linger.

Because she almost lost her, and the Doctor needs to know – Yaz needs her to know – that she’d be broken if she did.

So she kisses her cheek, and the Doctor’s entire body freezes.

Hell, all of time might freeze, for all the two of them know.

Sound fades away and the Doctor’s skin is soft and she sinks, ever so subtly, closer into Yaz’s tentative yet firm, possessive, kiss.

She brings her fingers to her own face when Yaz finally pulls away – both of them blushing something fierce – and feels her new favorite part of her body.

Because it’s the part of her body that Yasmin Khan has kissed.

Kissed.

Yasmin Khan.

The Doctor’s brain nearly explodes. Her body nearly does, too.

“You saved me,” is what winds up passing through her lips, because anything else, anything more, is danger, danger, danger. 

For Yaz, more than anyone.

“Always,” Yaz shrugs it off. “What is fam for?” 

They both try to chuckle, but neither can quite look each other in the face.

Because something has shifted at a tectonic level, in their own bodies, between their bodies.

And they both know it.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor is in a dark mood, and Yaz has the mis/fortune of interrupting her angst.
> 
> Inspired by Dark Star by James Young (some lyrics in italics)

_There’s things about me you don’t know_   
_If I told you where I’ve been would you still call me baby?_   
_If I told you everything would you call me crazy?_   
_‘Cuz baby I’m a dark star._   
_My heart was born out of the fire_   
_I lost love a thousand years ago and still I can’t find her_   
_Now i don’t love like I used to_   
_But I’ve got stories I could tell you if I want to._

She’s not banging around in the console room in the playful way Yaz is used to.

She’s banging around in the console room in the way someone does when they’ve broken their skin, their bones, on impenetrable walls of diamond for the entire lifetime of the universe.

She’s banging around in the console room like she knows what agony is, and she wants to swim in it.

Yaz has seen this woman smile at the idea of micro-bombs embedding themselves in the body of someone who’d killed someone she’d liked.

Yaz has seen this woman’s eyes flash, quick and subtle, when stepping in front of her fam to protect them from someone who would have no qualms about erasing them and their planet from existence.

She’s seen these things, but she’s never been frightened.

Not of the Doctor, anyway.

But maybe she should have been.

Because right now, the Doctor is being terrifying.

Her face is stone and her body is sinew and her anger at the entire multiverse radiates from her every pore.

The sleeves of her jacket are rolled up and she looks like she murder.

Yaz gulps, and somehow -- like her senses are more heightened, more animal, when she’s feeling like this -- the Doctor hears it.

“Yaz,” is all she says, and it’s not in the manic, effusive way she usually says it. It’s surprised and just a little bit hateful.

She has the sense, though, that the hatred is directed inward, not outward. Not at her.

Because there’s a layer of shame under her voice.

Yaz steps forward.

“You’re in a mood,” she says, and it’s not chastising, not accusing. It’s a statement with a dash of concern and a pinch of a question.

“Me? No.” The Doctor tries to pfft, tries to access her mask of silliness that is both mask and genuine, real and not real.

“Doctor.” Yaz takes another step forward, and the Doctor takes a step back.

It’s the first thing she’s done that truly surprises Yaz: her taking a step back. Like she thinks Yaz might hurt her. Or… no, that’s not it. Like she thinks…

Yaz’s heart breaks for the woman in front of her.

“You won’t hurt me, Doctor.”

“You can’t know that.” Her voice is small and it’s firm and it holds thousands of years of pain inside it.

“I can, and I do,” Yaz insists, and the Doctor takes two steps back for the one Yaz takes forward.

“You can’t, and you don’t, Yasmin Khan!” This time, it’s almost a shout, and Yaz freezes.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Yaz, I didn’t mean to raise my voice. Still not sure about all these social cues -- ”

“Oh, come off it, Doctor. That wasn’t about social cues. That was about pain. And you’re in it. What’s going on? You can tell me, you know. I won’t run away and I won’t break.”

Once again to her surprise, the Doctor shudders. Actually shudders. Like she’s seen humans break before, and she’s seeing it again, now, feeling it again, now.

“You can’t know that.”

Yaz considers this, and she plops herself down on the console room floor.

This casualness in the face of her rage seems to shock the Doctor more than anything, and she stares at Yaz like she’s never quite seen anything like her before.

“You can sit with me, or you can stand well over there. It don’t bother me either way. But I’m going to stay here and keep you company, Doctor. You don’t have to be alone when you’re feeling like this. Unless you want to be. But I don’t think you should be. Not right now.”

“I should never be left alone,” the Doctor murmurs, more, it seems, for her own ears than for Yaz’s. But Yaz tilts her head in confusion, inviting the Doctor to elaborate.

The Doctor sighs and throws up her arms in surrender. She, too, collapses onto the console room floor, all the way across from Yaz, but in perfect view of her.

“When I travel alone for too long -- or for any length of time, really -- when I travel alone, Yasmin Khan, I become… someone you wouldn’t recognize. Or, maybe you would. But I wouldn’t want you to. I wouldn’t want you to see that person. I become… cold. And callous, and… I need you.”

Yaz’s heart leaps.

“I need humans, friends. Fam.”

Yaz’s heart sinks. Not her specifically, then. But she forces herself to focus. This isn’t about her.

“Because without you, without traveling with you… that hope I’m always on about? It fades. It… transforms, into something ugly. And dangerous. Something I never want you to see.”

“Something like those micro bombs on Tim Shaw?”

“Something like that. But on a cosmic scale.”

Yaz nods. “Do you mean it, then? When you talk about hope? Your beliefs, in love, and all that?”

“Course I do! I just need help accessing it.”

“Then let me help you access it.”

Yaz scoots forward, and the Doctor blinks. Yaz wonders if she thinks she looks cute or ridiculous. Or both. Likely, she looks both.

She only stops scooting when her knees are mere centimeters from the Doctor’s.

“You don’t deserve to make yourself suffer, Doctor. You don’t have to punish yourself.”

“That’s not what I’m…”

“I think it is.”

“Yaz -- ”

“Doctor.”

Is she imagining the way the Doctor’s eyes flicker to her lips? Is she willing it into existence?

“I might not deserve to suffer, but I certainly don’t deserve you. Not really.”

“We’re gonna agree to disagree then, Doctor.”

She stands and offers the Doctor her hand.

Electricity when their skin touches.

She wonders if the Doctor feels it, too.

Their hands linger, connected, many seconds longer than necessary.

Yaz wonders if she should let go. She never wants to.

She hopes the Doctor doesn’t want to, either.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just Kiss Her, Then (Thasmin)

She’s dozed off on Ryan’s shoulder in the library.

Well, one of the libraries, anyway. Apparently, there’s one with a swimming pool in it.

Yaz has yet to find that one, and it’s definitely on her agenda.

But for now, her only agenda is a nap.

And Ryan’s shoulder is comforting, a piece of home in all this beautiful chaos.

His breathing is steady and he’s reading some book on quantum particles or the like.

“Yaz,” he nudges her softly as her dream intensifies, as she sighs helplessly in her sleep, the Doctor’s face clear in her mind’s eye. Her face, her body, her lips.

“Yaz,” Ryan tries again, and this time, she clearly hears his voice, not the Doctor’s, in her dream.

She scowls and grumbles as she wakes.

“I was having such a nice dream,” she shoves him slightly, affectionately, the way you shove your brother when they’ve been mildly irritating by being there for you. How dare them, right?

“Sounded like.” Ryan doesn’t smirk or laugh, but he does watch Yaz closely as she leans back and stretches.

“Did it?” An edge of panic hits Yaz’s voice, and Ryan closes the book he’d been absorbed in.

“Nothing to worry about, I didn’t hear anything R18. Just… sounded like you were having an intense… I didn’t want you to feel uncomfortable when you woke, you know?”

Yaz gulps, and Ryan cocks his head thoughtfully.

“You know, you should just kiss her, then. We all know she wants to. She just… you know, she can’t tell if she’s nervous or socially awkward half the time, so it makes sense she’d hesitate –”

“What are we talking about?” Her voice is unnaturally high.

She trusts Ryan, intimately. They’ve saved each other’s lives enough times by now, laughed together enough, eaten far too many intergalactic pancakes at what they imagined was 3am but they really had no clue because how could you tell our here, anyway, together.

But this… this is uncharted territory.

“You,” Ryan explains without a hint of lewdness. “And the Doctor.”

Yaz looks over her shoulder as though the Doctor were sitting right behind her.

“It’s okay, I checked. It’s just us,” Ryan assures her.

“What about me and the Doctor?” Yaz gulps.

“You telling me you sighing and swooning in your sleep wasn’t about the Doc?”

She gulps again, and lets Ryan answer his question.

“Is it that obvious?”

“No. Only to me. And Gramps, I think, but he don’t mind. The Doctor’s definitely too… you know, her… to notice, or… I think sometimes maybe she thinks she’s dangerous. Too dangerous to, you know. Fall in love. Or let herself admit it, anyway.”

Yaz thinks back on all their conversations, and yes. Yes, she knows that one to be wildly true.

She groans and buries her head in her hands.

“What am I gonna do, Ryan? It’s not like there’s any way I can possibly be attractive to an ancient alien who knows everything there is to know in the universe.”

“First off, she don’t know all that. She’d be the first to say it. And second, Yaz. She’s wild for you. You have to see it. Even if she can’t admit it, even to herself maybe. Just kiss her, then. Or ask to kiss her. Whatever you think she’d be more comfortable with, you know? But you’ve gotta do something. Or you’ll have one of those dreams again, and it won’t be me to wake you up from it.”

Mortification flashes through Yaz’s entire body, and she groans again. “Oh my god, you’re right. Ryan.” His name comes out like a little whine, and he puts his arm around her with a soft grin.

“Can’t say I blame you, Yaz. She’s pretty amazing. But so are you. You hear me? So are you.”

They settle into comfortable silence, both lost in their own thoughts. Neither of them notice when, a few minutes later, the Doctor pops into the library, new contraption and excitement in hand.

She quiets the moment she saw them, Ryan’s arm around Yaz, her head on his shoulder.

She quiets, and she leaves more quietly than she’s ever done anything.

When she eventually gets to show them her invention – apparently, she’s come up with a way to make waffles without a heat source – it’s somewhat lacking her usual enthusiasm. She seems… awkward.

Well. Moreso than usual.

Pained, almost.

But she smiles and claps her hand on Ryan’s shoulder when he tells her how good the waffles are, and she laughs hard when Graham asks if they can bring her invention everywhere with them.

She gulps when Yaz moans slightly in approval at tasting the heatless waffles, and Ryan notices even if Yaz doesn’t.

He nudges her and squeezes her arm before he comes up with the perfect excuse for he and Graham to leave Yaz and the Doctor alone: going off to find ice cream to make waffle sandwiches.

Yaz clears her throat when they leave. The Doctor fidgets with the sonic.

“So how’d you come up with this one, then?” Yaz asks when the silence and eye contact avoidance become too much to bear.

The Doctor’s eyes light up, eager for an excuse to launch into science talk.

“And waffles have built-in butter cups! Cups for butter, built into their internal structure! So I just had to make them, Yaz, it –”

Yaz steps forward. The light in the Doctor’s eyes is too much to bear.

_Just kiss her, then._

She puts her hand on the Doctor’s shoulder – if she doesn’t steady herself, she’ll fall harder than she ever has – and chickens out.

She kisses the side of her mouth, just so, a cheek kiss with a little slip to the side, a kiss near the mouth that isn’t at all a kiss on the mouth because really, it’s a kiss on the cheek.

But a kiss nonetheless.

Fireworks explode behind her eyes.

The Doctor freezes and stops talking more abruptly than she ever has. She stays stock still, and Yaz’s stomach plummets.

Until she summons enough courage to look into the Doctor’s eyes.

They’re exploding stars and they’re flickering between Yaz’s own eyes and her lips.

They gulp at the same time.

“Yasmin Khan,” the Doctor croaks, and neither of them can tell if it’s an invitation or a warning.

“Doctor. Thank you for bringing so much joy into our lives.”

“Waffles are joy, that’s very true.”

The Doctor’s voice hitches along with her breath.

Yaz takes a step back, her fingers slipping down the Doctor’s arm instead of just letting go from her shoulder.

She leaves the console room without another word, but her tingling skin – and the Doctor’s – speaks volumes.


	10. Chapter 10

She’s been fidgeting with the sonic far longer than is considered socially acceptable.

Well, to be honest, she’s never quite sure where to find the line between socially acceptable and socially barely-tolerable-but-we’ll-let-you-slide-by-because-you’re-clearly-the-only-one-who-knows-how-to-get-us-out-of-this-alive.

She wonders, sometimes, if she’d be forced to develop more social nuances if she were less brilliant.

And, let’s face it, she is absolutely, one hundred thirteen percent brilliant.

But then Yas had kissed her – well, not really, but sort of, but not at all, but a little bit, but definitely, but maybe she was just making it all up – and it made her fidget.

She fidgeted while her fam was off in the TARDIS interior, searching for ice cream to make waffle ice cream sandwiches, and she fidgeted when they got back and Yaz and Ryan promptly started bickering about the proper ice cream to waffle ratio.

She laughed along, of course, and joined Graham in the drown-the-waffles-in-three-flavors-of-ice-cream-then-add-more-waffles camp.

But still, she fidgeted.

Because whenever Yaz made eye contact with her, her entire body felt like she imagined a human adolescent’s did.

It didn’t stop after they all went off to bed, professing stomach aches and brain freeze and – in Ryan’s case – the need to shower because somehow (that somehow was Yaz’s mischief and Graham’s help), ice cream had ended up in his hair and down his shirt.

The Doctor fidgets well into the night, replaying the sound of Yaz’s voice – and those wide, soft eyes – when she’d said, simply but so, so full of promise, “Good night, Doctor.”

A simple sentence – one that she’d said maybe a hundred times at this point – but the Doctor found herself puzzling over the nuances of those three words as though they held the keys to the mysteries of the multiverse.

Because, she’s beginning to think, they just might.

She’s so lost in her fidgeting that she almost doesn’t notice when the object of her ponderings pads back into the console room, hours and hours later.

They don’t keep a firm concept of time on the TARDIS, but they do have a routine; it’s something vaguely resembling the middle of the night.

So she isn’t expecting the sound of Yaz’s socks on the cold console room floor.

And she certainly isn’t expecting to look up and see Yasmin Khan standing in her sleeping flannels and a robe that was clearly meant for a larger person. It drowned her, and the effect is at once sexy and endearing.

Even more striking, more surprising, is that her hair is down. Entirely down. It’s enough to make both the Doctor’s hearts skip; but they both skip twice, on account of the way Yaz’s hair is also ever-so-slightly tousled, like she’d tried for several hours and failed to find sleep.

“Yaz,” the Doctor chokes, unable to even summon the extra two syllables for the way she usually greets Yaz with her full name.

“Doctor.” She wonders if she’s imagining the hitch in Yaz’s voice, the way her normally wide eyes are even wider than normal. “I don’t want to disturb you. I just fancied a nighttime wander, is all, but I can wander off on my own if I’m interrupting anything – ”

“No. Stay. If you want to.”

“Course I do.”

“Then do.”

They both smile sheepishly at their stammerings, and the Doctor keeps fidgeting with her sonic. Yaz fidgets with the tie of her robe, and the Doctor finds herself relieved that it’s not just her.

“About earlier – ”

“I was thinking – ”

“Sorry. Go ahead.”

“After you.”

“No, Doctor, seriously. You were saying?”

“Humans first.”

“I… right.” The Doctor admires Yaz’s bravery while cursing her own cowardice. Yaz dives first. “About earlier. I hope I didn’t violate any boundaries. I know you have a long and complicated history with… anyway, I didn’t want to disrespect that. To disrespect you.”

“You didn’t disrespect anything, Yasmin Khan.” It’s a quiet voice, the one she uses now. One she rarely finds herself using in this incarnation. She can hear herself saying ‘always’ in this voice when Yaz had asked if she could make a request. But it still feels like a new muscle, this softness.

Yaz’s pupils definitely dilate at the sound of it, though, and the Doctor wonders if it’s a voice she should work harder to cultivate.

“It’s just that you seemed to freeze up. Not that it… not that we did anything so… it’s not like I kissed your mouth or nothing, but I just wanted to make sure you didn’t feel… Doctor, I meant it when I said I’m sure. About traveling with you. I meant it then, and I mean it now. And I don’t want you to think that it’s for the wrong reasons, or for only one reason, or – ”

“I want to kiss your mouth.”

The interruption is sudden, and it spills off the Doctor’s tongue like the number one is-this-nervous-or-socially-awkward statement of the millennium.

Yaz’s face freezes, and so do her fidgeting fingers.

The Doctor’s gulp is audible, and so is Yaz’s.

“I’ve been trying to work out if you wanted to kiss my cheek and just caught the side of my mouth by accident or what, but if you’re up thinking about it, and I’m up tinkering, then I think maybe we were thinking the same thing, and if we were, then damn it all to the Daleks, Yasmin Khan, I want to kiss your mouth. If you want me to.”

Yaz steps forward so quickly that the Doctor doesn’t even have the chance to blink before soft lips are on hers, and oh, it feels different in this body, but just as overwhelming, just as perfect. Maybe even moreso.

So kisses Yaz back, her sonic clattering to the floor, before she can calculate how long it’s been since she’s done this. And when Yaz’s lips part to let her tongue slip through them, the sounds Yaz makes are sounds the Doctor never, ever wants to stop hearing.

Yaz’s hands go right up to tangle in the Doctor’s hair, and the Doctor finds one of her hands in Yaz’s hair, the other on her waistline, slipping under her robe so that only one thin – but also too, too thick – layer of fabric separates their skin.

The Doctor’s thumb skims Yaz’s cheek, and she’s pretty sure Yaz swoons.

Or maybe that’s her own body.

She’s having trouble distinguishing at the moment.

And for right now, that’s just fine.

Brilliant, even.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> smut happens.

“Bed,” Yaz pronounces when it becomes clear that this isn’t going to stop with a nighttime fumble over her pajamas in the console room.

“So many to choose from,” the Doctor muses, and Yaz chuckles into the hollow of the Doctor’s throat, where her lips have made their new home.

“I like you sounding this frazzled,” she returns, kissing her way up to the Doctor’s ear, teasing her tongue gently around cuff chain earring that’s turned her on from day one.

“Oh, you haven’t even begun to hear me frazzled,” the Doctor half-growls, and it’s this sudden streak of confidence - of knowing exactly how sexy she is, exactly what she’s doing to Yasmin Khan by the simple act of _existing_ \- that finally make Yaz’s knees buckle.

The Doctor catches her with surprisingly strong arms - Yaz remembers being both horrified and… something…. _else_ … when she was chained up by the lake during the witch hunts - and brings their mouths back together.

“Fine. Whatever bed you want. But I don’t you dare stop kissing me,” Yaz commands, and the Doctor both obeys and takes the lead.

Because Yaz knows - they both do, and they know they’ll talk about it later for hours and hours, but now is for something distinctly different than talk - that the choice of bed won’t be accidental, for the Doctor. It will be deliberate and intentional.

Because she knows the Doctor has a wife, and she knows the Doctor’s been in love with people she’s traveled with before. Intensely so; painfully so.

She knows the Doctor has left them behind, or that they’ve had no choice but to leave, or worse.

She knows.

So she knows that there are bedrooms on the TARDIS that the Doctor keeps the same as they were thousands of years ago, to keep the memories pristine. To honor the women - and the men, and beyond - who’d slept in them. Who she’d slept in with them.

Well, not slept, most likely.

She wasn’t sure, truth be told, if the Doctor even slept.

But that was alright.

Finding a bed, tonight, wasn’t about finding a place to sleep.

She takes the Doctor’s hand and she lets her tug her out of the console room, hesitating as she kisses her at the opening that leads into the depths of the TARDIS.

“You need to be sure,” the Doctor tells her, not for the first time; and Yaz somehow knows it won’t be the last. Her voice is low and soft and maybe - no, not maybe, definitely - more than a little frightened. And hopeful.

Always, with this woman, hopeful.

“Because you can stop and tap out at any time, Yaz, but we can’t go back and change it. The things we’re thinking of doing. We won’t be able to go back, to take it back. You can stop us whenever you want, but it can’t be erased.”

“I would never want it to, Doctor.” And she means it. _Gods_ , how she means it.

Because this isn’t a late night fumble because she needs to get off, or a playful flirtation-gone-physical between mates.

This tastes like something different, something _more_ , __because this is something different.

This is something _more._

More time with her.

 _More_ with her, more _of_ her.

More with the Doctor, more _of_ the Doctor.

She fills Yaz’s lungs and her bloodstream, and if the look of smouldering fire in the Doctor’s eyes is any indication, she’s doing the same for the Doctor.

She knows it won’t be forever.

She knows forever is a relative term.

But she knows that she wants more.

With this marvelous woman.

“I would never want to take this back,” she says again, because she needs the Doctor to really _hear_ her.

And she thinks, maybe, that she does, because the Doctor obeys her command from earlier, then: she takes her and kisses her and Yaz forgets what oxygen is because with the Doctor’s mouth on hers like that, what even _is_ oxygen, really?

“Sure?” The Doctor slips her tongue into Yaz’s mouth.

“Sure,” Yaz breathes, dipping her head back to allow the Doctor better access to her throat.

“Fuck,” is all she whispers, next, infected with the heady force of the Doctor’s tug toward one of the TARDIS bedrooms - _her_ bedroom, she realizes with a giddy sense that the Doctor wants all of her.

“Exactly,” the Doctor grins, all teeth and childishness, and the normally uncomfortable juxtaposition strikes Yaz, right now, as perfect. Perfectly _the Doctor_.

But when they kiss again, the Doctor is all business.

She pushes back the shoulders of Yaz’s nighttime robe - “alright?” “please, yes” - and she lets Yaz push her up against her bedroom wall, stripping her of her suspenders - “that okay that I take these off?” “Yasmin Khan, I thought you’d never ask” - and lifting up her shirt, dropping to her knees and kissing her way up the Doctor’s bare stomach.

The feeling of the Doctor’s fingers tangled in her hair while she’s on her knees for her is the most erotic thing she’s ever experienced.

Until, of course, the Doctor pulls her back to standing and the two of them topple into bed.

“Kit off,” Yaz teases breathlessly, but instead of laughing, the Doctor earnestly obeys, her eyes wide and her lips slightly swollen and her hair perfectly mussed, and _gods_ , Yaz didn’t think the Doctor’s earring cuff could be any sexier, but that’s only because it’s never been the only thing she’s seen her wear.

“You’re beautiful,” is all Yaz can murmur, and the flush runs up the Doctor’s entire body.

She wonders if she’s ever been called beautiful before, in this millenium.

“So are you, Yaz.” It’s a whisper and it’s soft and it’s precious and it is, indisputably, _everything._

Much like this entire night is shaping up to be.

_to be continued._


	12. Chapter 12

She realizes dimly that the Doctor has looked at her like this before. 

Like she’s the center of everything.

Like if she blinked out of existence, so would the entire universe.

She wonders if that’s what it’s like. 

Being the Doctor.

If being the Doctor means focusing on every moment like it’s the only one, because there are nearly infinite moments in her mind, and if she lets go…

She doesn’t want her to be scared, but gods does she want her to let go.

Because, her hair pooled around Yaz’s pillow - the Doctor, laying underneath her, lips slightly swollen, in her bed, her actual bed, looking up at her like she’s everything - the Doctor has looked at her like this before, but never naked, never completely breathless, never nearly begging for more.

So Yaz gives her more.

She gives her more because she knows that this new body of the Doctor’s has never felt more, never experienced more, and Yaz goes slow and she asks questions and she listens to the pitch of the Doctor’s gasping whines and soft whimpers for answers. 

“Alright?” she asks before she slides her tongue up the Doctor’s inner thighs, and she smiles at the way the Doctor closes her eyes in concentration, her mouth tilted to one side, thinking. Considering. Feeling.

“Yes,” she tells her, with a similar satisfaction to when she figures out a complex equation. Like Yaz is a complex equation that she never wants to solve, but always to be working on.

“Please,” she adds, like she’s giving herself permission to remember that this is supposed to feel good.

And gods, does it.

“You stop me anytime, understand?” Yaz murmurs as she makes a home for herself between the Doctor’s legs, and this time, the Doctor doesn’t need to think, to consider, to calculate. This time, she shakes her head immediately.

“Don’t want you to. Stop, I mean. Definitely not.” She sits up suddenly, halfway, leaning up on her elbows, and it’s the sexiest thing Yaz has ever seen.

“Unless you want to.” Her voice is doing that thing again. Low and soft and deep.

“Told you already,” Yaz crawls up her body to kiss her mouth, because she will never get tired of kissing this woman’s mouth. 

“I’m sure.”


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “They Won’t Stop Kissing Now” ft. Poor Ryan & Graham

They kiss all the time now.

When they’re chained up at a submarine at the bottom of the Pacific with little to no hope for escape: except the plan the Doctor has hatched that involves, at this point, a little bit of waiting.

And the Doctor has been many things, over many lifetimes, but ‘patient’ has really never been one of those things.

And kissing Yasmin Khan, it turns out, is a brilliant way to pass the time.

They kiss when they’re in the console room and they totally thought Ryan and Graham were off exploring the rest of the TARDIS. Totally. Because Yaz absolutely does not enjoy making the rest of the fam squirm and the Doctor has most definitely figured out all the social conventions of human sexuality.

Yaz kisses her cheek - for some reason, kissing the Doctor’s cheek still makes Yaz blush, and even Ryan has to admit that it’s adorable - for absolutely no reason and every reason, and it never fails to make the Doctor stammer and forget what she was saying.

The Doctor kisses Yaz’s hand at every possible opportunity (and even situations that literally no one else in the multiverse would consider an opportunity), and at first it makes Graham smile and awww, but now he just rolls his eyes and digs even deeper into his sandwich, because shouldn’t we be running from these people who want to kill us instead of romancing each other.

Yaz swoons out of nowhere sometimes and Ryan just turns to her and asks, ever so casual, “thinking about the Doc?”

“About last night, yeah,” Yaz will answer dreamily, and Ryan loves them both, and he ships it hard, he really does, but god, does he wish he hadn’t asked.

“So you and Yaz, ey Doc?” Graham asks conspiratorially early on, because he might be a literal grandpa but dammit if he doesn’t love his bisexual grandson and his newly adopted… well… his newly adopted Yasmin.

He expected the Doctor to smile and maybe to blush, but instead her eyes go wide with enthusiasm and she takes him on the magical mystery tour of a Time Lord’s thoughts on relationships and love and just how to cherish the moment when you live as long as she’s lived, and he, too, winds up wishing he hadn’t asked.

But not really.

Not really, because Ryan and Graham both develop a new favorite thing about traveling in the TARDIS with the fam.

Watching the Doctor light up, even when she’s beaten and miserable and defeated, when Yaz touches her hand.

Watching Yaz blush extra hard when the Doctor calls her brilliant.

Watching the way they’ll stand, back to back, shoulder to shoulder, protecting each other and protecting their boys against all the odds the multiverse throws at them.

And it throws a lot.

Well, okay.

They both develop several new favorite things about traveling in the TARDIS with the fam.

And all of it revolves around just how much these women mean to each other.


End file.
